An important life lesson for anyone working on Wall Street

For young people working hard on Wall Street, it's easy to get
caught up in the daily grind and lose sight of what's important.

But one successful young Wall Streeter told Business Insider how
crucial it is to regain that perspective.

Michelle Domanico, a principal in credit at investment giant KKR,
has seen financiers young and old get caught up in the Wall
Street lifestyle and become overly dependent on their jobs — only
to lose it all.

"I found a lot of people were making a lot of money in these
roles but had built lifestyles around them which were extremely
expensive," she said. That made them extremely dependent on their
jobs — and their bonuses.

What's more, many of the people she worked with during the
recession suddenly felt trapped.

They had "a very specific skill set, and all of a sudden no other
places were hiring, and they depended on those bonuses that were
completely discretionary at the end of the year in order to pay
for the lifestyle that they had built," she said — be that
private school for their children or Manhattan mortgages.

She said a lot of people in finance, even today, consider their
bonuses as mandatory, even though they are always discretionary.
And that makes for disgruntled employees and a tough work
culture.

Domanico also said there's enormous pressure on Wall Street to
"Keep up with the Joneses'" — that is, to display your wealth in
a visible way, partly because young bankers don't have enough
time to really enjoy it.